Muse

Not Muse the band - although maybe sometimes they can be involved.  I am talking about a muse ... a muse to inspire you to write. 

I guess everyone must have something, a thing which triggers or inspires the creative juices. Mine just happens to be Music. Apparently I can not write a thing until I have an inspiring playlist created. It kind of reminds me of trying to write my dissertation at Uni and being unable to write anything down until I had won four games of Solitaire in a row (this may have been time wasting!)

So now, a decade later, I can not write a sentence until I hear lyrics or a tune that inspires me to feel something, and this is the key, it is not to make 'me' Natasha Bowyer feel something, it has to make my character feel something then I can write about it. 

Here is the funny bit, I have realised that my playlists are completely backwards and this is obviously what makes every character I have written so complicated.  To write Lilah McCannon I listened to endless teenage music, lots of break up or make up angsty tunes - and this was way before I knew what Lilah's character was going to do or who she was really going to be.  All well and good, job done - sort of. 

Once the story was completed and I stopped listening to the playlist all the characters of my book left my head. At last there was peace and quiet from the incessant chatting and plot creating that takes up so much of my sanity. 

This was lovely until I realised that I was not hearing anything. Nothing. Nada.  No voices in my head at all - not even my own.

The madness behind my writing suddenly became apparent to me yesterday morning. Kiddie number two is home from school poorly. In my role as super mum I put everything on hold and jump into bed next to him to keep an eye on him (and also because I am knackered from being up all night catching sick). On the second watching of The Avengers I decide that enough is enough and I am going to listen to some music and start to listen to a new album, which I have not had the time to listen to since downloading. 

And there it is....

The song that I need. Just one teeny tiny song to create a whole new novel. Three listens and I have my main characters plotted, not in a conventional sense but they are there, striking up conversations in my head. Suddenly there they are; my friends are back they are just different ones from before, a whole new bunch of people to listen to music with and write about, strangers to me now but not for long.

Another three listens and I have my setting, I can visualise the sensation of the sand in my toes, I can smell the sea in the air and I can hear the scrape of a kitchen chair across a tile floor. 

All from one song. How powerful is that.

The irony is that the playlist I created for them last night is full of music for an slightly older audience, I am talking, songs about people who have been places, seen things and are dealing with the aftermath. Funny that my new book has a definite YA feel to it.

So basically the way my brain works is - for older people who should know better, I listen to younger music to keep the youth alive, and the with the young I like visualise them trying to understand the concepts and meaning behind music aimed at people in their thirties - things they should never rush to learn.

So my characters are all people who all want to be something that they aren't. 

Or perhaps it is me, me who with every passing year wishes that I could rewind a year.  Maybe now I am in my thirties I wish I could forget all the things that have made me learn the lessons behind the lyrics - imagine listening to 'The Scientist' and not actually understand what it means.

Maybe ignorance is bliss, but if that is true I would have nothing to write about. So I shall just breathe around the awkward lyrics that make my chest ache and instead I shall let my characters tell their tales, I am sure that they are far more interesting than mine.